Posts Tagged Autocad

So a recent article at Constructech, A Platform for Residential BIM, got me to digging. Mostly, it outlines how Instinct Residential Design System is gluing together a variety of systems to create and integrated model and delivery system. Yeah I said glue. We saw Autodesk’s recent acquisition of Horizontal Glue and from their site, Glue…

One central repository that manages models across all trades

No interoperability and file format exchange issues

Exchanges between BIM and Project Management Systems

Integrated building model version control

And while the Instinct web site serves up the more generic reasons for why to use BIM, they could probably take Glue’s bullet points above and paste them in because of they have bolted together a variety of products including VisonRez, which is from AmeriCAD and runs on an Autodesk backbone, which was ADT (Architectural Desktop) now Autodesk Architecture and has the benefit of of Autocad familiarity. It also includes VIEW, hsbCAD and Intellibuild compatibility into the bundle. Changes in the model can be driven through to all stakeholders. Changing components allows wall systems to be verified, HVAC and plumbers to reroute and get the right stuff on the truck. Sounds just what you want out of a centralized model and one of the pillars of BIM.

Side Bar

When people think of BIM, they don’t necessarily think of ADT (Architectural Desktop) / AutoCAD Architecture but no one should be surpised that ADT has such a long tail. I know and liked the package and it is easy to draft in, and uses the same commands as Autocad. Also I’ve been in meetings and conferences where the BIM sales team throws the same companies CAD and/or “older” offerings under the bus. I don’t think denigrating anything is the way to sell and if this solves a problem, gets people working on the same page, reduces errors and changes, centralizes the model, well all right. BIM is a big tent and it’s a way of thinking and integrating, it is not any one software platform. Why use a crow bar to open a door when you have the key. What’s the key people? That’s key.

So I am just adding to the rumor mill, first started, or first heard by me, by Steve Stafford on his twitter feed, so I’ll throw him under the bus if it does not come to pass that the next release of Revit will be “Revit and AutoCAD glued together in one product called ReviCAD….” There has been a lot of bundling going in the recent years such as buy AutoCAD get Revit with it, etc. but not before has it been under one hood, so interesting if you could use AutoCAD’s drafting tool inside of a Revit view, as I’d like that but how about as a tool to increase migration to Revit, although arguably AutoCAD and Revit lead their fields as CAD drafting and BIM authoring platforms, this doesn’t require anyone to make the leap if it’s true, your just in it. So if true, as those guys in the Guiness commercials would say, “Brilliant.”

Reports coming over the interweb that Autodesk will be releasing a version of AutoCAD native for the Mac. For someone writing this on a Mac while AutoCAD Architecture / ADT is running on on Parallels (PC Simulator) simultaneously this is initially a big yawn. However, for the fervent MAC camp that rather ride down a razor railing than use anything PC related this has to be met with much joy and confirmation that the MAC platform is superior and even the big boys now have to admit it and start creating or recreating native programs for the MAC. The bigger question remains why? My guess? Because Apple is ‘cool’ and so, then why not.

I first saw this over at Architosh, where the article goes into further depth about how it was programmed, Cocoa v. Aqua which has absolutely no relevance to me, as with my refrigerator, I plug it in, it makes things cold as I load software, I expect it to work. From a development standpoint I’ll have to ask some people smarter than me how easy–> difficult it will be to port programs from Windows to Mac environment but we’ll have to wait for the real release.